Topless FEMEN Activist Attacks Orthodox Patriarch of Russia

“Kirill had just stepped out from a plane when our activist Yana Zhdanova performed her ‘sex attack,'” FEMEN’s Inna Shevchenko tells ANIMAL over Skype. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill the First was about to launch into a press conference at a Ukrainian airport, but, as Inna says, “We don’t need his shit.”

On their LiveJournal, FEMEN clarifies: “Ukrainian women are proud and free and will never kiss a copper’s boot, even if it is hidden under the stinking Pope cassock.” The quote reads like an homage to the classic Voina action when a performance artist, dressed in a priest cassock and a cop uniform, robbed a supermarket to point out the hypocrisy of Russia’s incestuous relationship of church and state.

FEMEN have written that the action Kill Kirill was in support of “arrested activists.” The Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Russia has recently condemned “devious” activist rockers Pussy Riot to hell and his influence allegedly resulted in Pussy Riot facing seven years in prison for the blasphemy of a protest song in a Moscow church. Meanwhile, Kirill was caught in a scandal when his $30,000 designer watch was Photoshopped out of a church press photo. They forgot about the shadow.

And so, Yana, brandishing only the provocative slogan of “Kill Kirill” on her chest, rushed the Patriarch. She was grabbed, imprisoned and sentenced to 15 days in prison. The courts refuse to see her action as a protest and instead are charging her with hooliganism. Inna tells us that while Yana was in custody, she was roughly interrogated as the cops are confounded about how she snuck her way into this exclusive, televised, heavily guarded event. After the “sex attack,” Kirill continued, routinely mumbling out a blessing.

And so, FEMEN continue to resist Russian political influence and orthodoxy with their signature tactic–their bare breasts as weapons of shock and awe. They write that they want to keep Kirill “far from political and social life of Ukraine” and are “against such visits of Kiril brotherhood to Ukraine that [brings its] Russian shit to sick Ukrainian society.” Something tells us this visit will be quite memorable.